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The Watering Hole; Friday December 4 2015; Shade, and Sun

Had I not seen the SunI could have borne the shade . . .(Emily Dickinson)

First, the shade — and yes, it’s hard to bear sometimes:

I’ll be brief. “Brief” seems a blessing, actually, once you read the following contributions by right wing and evangelical (assuming there’s a difference) nutcases. Best advice is to just hang on, it’ll all be over. And soon!

Ok, so there, in no particular order, were eight full doses of toxic waste. Glad we’re done with that part. And now, prepare yourself for several (eight, actually) breaths of really clean and fresh air! (And yes, it’s now OK to remove the no-longer-needed Saran Wrap from your keyboard).

Here’s an abbreviated glimpse of what can reasonably be called ‘November’, or maybe ‘Autumn in the Rockies.’ Note the absence of humans, also the absence of things named Trump, Cruz, Huckabee, Nugent, Beck, et al. No toxic waste, in other words. No garbage! So go ahead, feel free to just sit back, relax, and enjoy.

November 1: a pair of Canadians ‘On Golden Pond’

November 4: Busy bee working the local ‘Forget-Me-Not’ bonanza

November 7: ‘The Last Rose of’ . . . Autumn

November 25: The lull — and the SKY! — before the storm

November 29: Same mountain, clear skies (finally!) and LOTS of snow

November 30: Little feller checking out his fresh white world

To close it out, here are two more from a similarly memorable November past:

Nov 2, 2009: Front Range lake reflection (inverted)

November 29, 2009: Thanksgiving (morning) backyard Guest

OK, so that’s it. Two worlds, both available, both accessible, amazingly different. One’s peaceful, the other nerve-wracking. Why is that? Why is the human world so indelibly messed up? Has it always been that way?

William Wordsworth once asked pretty much the same questions, then answered them in just a few words when he wrote, in his poem Lines Written In Early Spring:

To her fair works did Nature linkThe human soul that through me ran;And much it grieved my heart to thinkWhat man has made of man.

Who, besides political or evangelical hacks, could ever find argument with that? Yeah, I know, there’s not space enough or time enough to list them all. Wouldn’t do any good anyway.

I’m creating a new word: Huckabee
A “Huckabee” is two or more cats wharfing up fur balls on an expensive carpet.

Please try to use this in a sentence or during daily conversation.
Example. “I was cat sitting for my (fill in blank) and they Huckabee’d on my new carpet”.
“I don’t think I’ll ever get that stain out”.

I’d like to invite Mitch to my Oncology appointment – without ACA/Obamacare I’d have no specialists to assist me in my choices and would have to, seriously, just wait to die.
I despise the Repugnant Party.

I’m with you 200% on that one, Ebb. The ACA isn’t what it ought to be, but it’s WAY ahead of ANYTHING the Fascist Party will ever agree to. They don’t give a shit about ordinary people. They’re crud. Period.

So doesn’t the fundamentalist interpretation of the 2nd Amendment (the one which looks like it really does have the potential to destroy the country – or at least have a bunch of us die in a hail of bullets sometimes) allow for ‘arms’ to be held not ‘infringed’?

So why can’t we all have pipebombs, RPGs, a T72 (just like those non-Russian ‘tractor drivers and miners’ have in Ukraine). What’s stopping me building a dirty bomb or an anthrax bomb? They are all ‘arms’?

Why not? Because the gun manufacturers don’t get diddly for a pipebomb (maybe Home Depot might?)….

The fact that you are a sane reasonable person with a moral compass that has no sick desire to inflict pain and suffering upon people.
Because you don’t believe there’s a monster under your bed.
Because you’re capable of rational thought.
Because, like me, you probably wouldn’t do so well in prison.

The common denominator in mass shootings is the use of firearms. Variables such as political ideology, religious fervor and mental illness are motivating factors, but death comes from the gun.

Until our society recognizes that simple truth, the list of place names to which Colorado Springs and San Bernardino were recently added will have no end.

. . .

As of this writing, the San Bernardino massacre does not yet conform to one of the politically convenient templates. We’ll make it fit eventually, though. If the motive is deemed to have anything to do with religion, the far right will be able to rail about putting mosques under surveillance and giving the National Security Agency carte blanche to snoop into Americans’ lives. If an office-related grudge was the cause, we can all spend a couple of weeks bemoaning the inadequacy of mental-health services in this country, then do nothing about it.

In the case of the Planned Parenthood mass shooting in Colorado Springs, by contrast, we’ve already retreated to our ideological corners. The accused killer reportedly told police “no more baby parts,” so he must have been inspired by incendiary antiabortion rhetoric. Or else political speech had nothing to do with the atrocity, since the man is clearly deranged.

Well? Chances are pretty good that a would-be assassin today would have a much more effective and deadly weapon. If he/she waited until his/her target visited an open carry state he/she could even go with a rifle.

I don’t think we would even have to revive Raygun. Just hold a reenactment of the assassination attempt every week with various rightwhiners standing in for him. I would nominate Wayne La Pierre for the first installment.

A Missouri lawmaker is introducing a bill that would subject gun buyers in the state to the same kind of restrictions that women face if they choose to have an abortion.

State Rep. Stacey Newman (D-St. Louis) has pre-filed a bill for the state legislature’s 2016 session that would require buyers to wait 72 hours to make a gun purchase, which they would only be able to do at a store at least 120 miles from their home. Women in the state must wait 72 hours before they can get an abortion and the 120-mile restriction is intended to draw attention to the long distances that women must travel to have one.

Proving that, in spite of how long I’ve had a computer, I can still reach a new level of incompetence, I managed to get mine somehow typing backwards! I finally fixed it. It’s actually an option if you right-click, you can select ‘writing direction’. All these years, I never even noticed it was an option you could or would want to choose.

Have you noticed? There’s a new thing that progressives should not do, because it will scare the horses and frighten the children, and harsh the holy mellows of the various tent-show evangelicals currently at work in Republican politics. It is called “prayer-shaming.” It became a thing in the wake of the San Bernardino massacre, when Republican candidates immediately leaped onto Twitter to send “thoughts and prayers to the victims and their families.” This time, however, a great number of people, most notably Senator Chris Murphy and the editors of the New York Daily News, decided that up with this pious swill was something that they no longer would put.

Oh, the whining that has ensued. The Malkin Monkeyhouse is in high earth orbit and probably won’t splash down until June. Even some nominal liberals are clutching the pearls. But nobody’s dudgeon has gone higher than that of Our Lady of the Magic Dolphins. The cartoon canaries circling her ears are screaming like scalded vultures. Why are the canaries screaming, Clarice?

I’ve been reading Charles P. Pierce for a while now. I just realized where Molly Ivins found a place to rest.